Miami — Police arrested the former caretakers of missing 6-year-old Rilya Wilson on Wednesday, saying they lied, cheated and used the little girl for financial gain.

Geralyn and Pamela Graham, who claim to be half sisters, were charged with stealing about $14,257 in food stamps and welfare payments and thrown in jail -- a move authorities hope will compel the two women to reveal what they know about the child's disappearance. Police also arrested Geralyn Graham's adult son and daughter, Leo and Jacqueline Epson, on lesser charges.

"We think that the people we've arrested today are the people that most likely know the whereabouts of Rilya Wilson," said Doyle Jordan, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement regional director. "We are operating under the assumption she's alive."

Long after Rilya Wilson vanished, Geralyn and Pamela Graham continued to accept payments to help care for the little girl, money they began receiving as a result of forged documents that showed Geralyn was Rilya's grandmother, authorities said. The foster child had been missing for more than a year before the state noticed she was gone.

Authorities now say they also don't believe Geralyn Graham is Rilya's grandmother.

Though they called her "Gerrilyn Smith" on Wednesday, authorities say she was arrested under the name "Jane Doe" because she has almost 40 aliases. She was being held in lieu of $600,000 bond, an unusually high amount because she is a flight risk and her true identity is not known, prosecutors said.

To seek additional leads, authorities also announced Wednesday increased reward money -- $100,000 -- for information leading to Rilya's recovery.

Had Rilya's disappearance not come to light, authorities may never have discovered the alleged fraud. But in searching for the truth about the girl's disappearance, police said they were led to the truth about Graham and her closest associates.

FOR THE RECORD - CORRECTION PUBLISHED FRIDAY, OCTOBER 4, 2002.An article on Page 1A of Thursday's edition misspelled the name of Doyle Jourdan, regional director of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

"It is an ugly truth cloaked in lies, wrapped in deception and tied together by the simple desire to steal from the public and to steal from the needy, all with criminal intent of leading the easy life at the expense of others," said Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle.

Pamela Graham's attorney, Joshua Fisher, said the arrests are a sign that authorities are trying to strong-arm his client into providing information about Rilya to help themselves politically.

"A month before an election they decide that they're going to arrest these people," Fisher said. "It's pretty clear that they're trying to throw the press and the public a bone. They can't find the girl so let's get them for something else."

He said he had not yet talked to his client and did not know enough about the charges to comment on them.

The Grahams, who cared for Rilya beginning in April 2000, said they last saw her in January 2001 when a state child welfare worker took Rilya away for an evaluation and never brought her back. Department of Children & Families officials say they have no record of such a visit.

State child welfare workers didn't notice she was missing until April 2002 because she was not receiving monthly caseworker visits, as required by law.

The case became the latest embarrassment to the state's child welfare system and led to the resignation of DCF Secretary Kathleen Kearney. The agency was dealt another blow in August when the South Florida Sun-Sentinel found nine missing children the child welfare agency had been unable to locate for as long as eight years.

Officials seized on the arrests Wednesday as proof that finding Rilya and other missing children is a top priority for the state.

Geralyn Graham, 56, was arrested during a traffic stop Wednesday morning and charged with seven counts of public assistance fraud and one count each of forgery, driver's license fraud, title fraud and making a false affidavit. Prosecutors called Geralyn Graham a "professional criminal."

Prosecutors have charged her with fraudulently applying for cash payments, food stamps and Medicaid benefits from DCF to care for Rilya Wilson and her younger sister Rodericka. Officials said that Graham falsely claimed to be the children's grandmother to qualify for assistance.

Graham was "the central figure in a series of frauds which depended on having the custody ... of Rilya Wilson and that was the only way she was able to successfully pull off this fraud," Rundle said. She also referred to Graham as a "would-be grandmother, the woman who became a grandmother for the money only."